He would always remember the name his mother had given him upon his… birth., though a living mouth had not spoken it in longer than he cared to recall. However, the name by which he was known here in this world called Thach, “Ashe,” was the name everyone either attributed to him over the many years of his long life, or the name they immediately grasped onto with a fervor once they had learned of it.
His stepfather had called him “Luaithre.” When he had been entertaining Lowlander guests, and was merry with too many glasses of wine, he would introduce his “son” to his guests as “Cinis,” or sometimes “Fraxinus.” A group of traders had come all the way from An Spainne, and his father had introduced his then 14 year old self as “Cenizo.”
His gray skin color, gray eyes, and the slightly darker gray hair had disturbed the man just enough to call the very young lordling many cruel names, but never quite enough to disown the boy, nor to put his mother out from the castle, and the shelter of her husband’s protection. Later, after his stepfather had passed, the name of “Lord Ashe” had become just well known enough that he could not escape it.
When his mother’s great, great uncle, a notoriously mad sorcerer, had cast him from that world to this one, he had spent a year learning the local language before realizing the people who had taken him in had been calling him “The One Who is the Color of Ashes.” It had been a depressing and humbling moment in his very long life.
Many years had passed since that day. Almost two centuries, were he any judge of time; though he would admit that his grasp of time was shaky at best. Beyond a few decades, everything became “back then, when this had happened,” “in the time of (insert king’s name here),” or, more annoyingly, “just the other day.” He had simply embraced the name “Ashe” and had moved on with his life. It had made everything else just that little bit easier.
And now he stood on the edge of a threshold of a ruined warehouse near the docks that made up the southern edge of the city in which he lived, surveying the wreckage of human lives caused by a monster.
He knew, both from the evidence before him and from the witnesses who had survived the attack that at least two monstrous beasts had done the killing. But as he looked at the blood flecked destruction, and the sail cloth covered remains of the victims, Ashe knew there was A Monster behind all of this.
Forcing his mind into a heightened state, he Delved the area nearest.
Different cultures and countries had different terms for what he was doing now, but “Delving” was the local label the Talented used to describe employing the magically enhanced mind to investigate one’s surroundings. With effort and training one could look at an area or an object to see what magics had been used upon it, or what magics were being used by it, in the case of Artifacts.
Most Talented beings Ashe had met had some version or another of Delving that they employed to better see the world around them. Some trained themselves to use the ability to sense magic being employed anywhere nearby. Others honed the skill into a tool for discovery in their attempts to learn more about the world, including those things that fell into both natural and the supernatural sides of the spectrum.
Steadying his breathing, and closing his eyes, Ashe made an effort of Will that pushed his mind past the boundaries of his body and out into the world around him, and with that effort came the matched efforts of interpreting those phenomena his Delving revealed. It would do a mage absolutely no good to expand one’s mind out into the ether, and spend an hour getting distracted by things which were, on the whole, irrelevant.
He could see Master Elbana, and several of her Guardsmen in the building working with the Cityguard on cataloging the devastation; and while he found Elbana’s efforts to organize the mess, they were irrelevant to his pursuits.
Several women were kneeling over the dead bodies of the men who had been here when the… incident… had happened. All of the bodies, and parts of bodies, had been of men, which was an interesting detail. No women. No Youths. Just men. Interesting, but not quite that for which he had been searching. The women all cried, and the combined sounds of their anguish made the air slowly throb and resonate in a pattern that their grief made in the world would taint the air in this building for decades to come. Were this emotional discoloration, this bruise in the air, allowed to remain, it would attract other acts of sadness and misery. If left to continue in this spiraling manner this building would become a locus of grief. It would be cursed, and would attract those things, both people and other beings, that flourished in environments of loss and terror.
This will need to be changed. And the sooner the better… Maybe the king can have the building rededicated to some aspect of helping the families of those who died here tonight… something to make people look at this place with some modicum of hope… I will talk to him as soon as I finish here... Ashe thought as his mind went questing further and deeper into the very fabric of reality, scattering his awareness further about the place where his body stood in the murky darkness outside of the entrance to the impromptu abattoir.
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It was then that his Sight fell upon a small, dark puddle of blood surrounded by a few drops just outside of the entrance. Suddenly, as his mind latched onto the presence of the blood, his consciousness spiraled down to focus upon the ichor. In the moonlight, devoid of the light of the torches from within the warehouse, he could see the blood was alive with magic under the silvery light, tinged blue with his senses enhanced by his delving.
HIs mind wandered closer to that shimmering pool of spilled life, and saw the lives of two men ending in a stroke of… something dark that passed between them and their connections to the world around them. He could feel their brief joy, and acceptance of something they had both been offered, and then… Darkness. Rage. Screaming. Hunger.
And now Ashe could see, in the negative light that emanated from that small pool of Life’s Blood on the cobbled street in the darkness of the now moonless night. The smears of footprints as they had made their way into the cavernous storage building. Each step they took carried each of those men further away from their humanity. Further afield from those they had loved, and had any connections to.
Once inside of that killing ground, his mind buzzed and hummed along the ground following first one and then the other man’s footprints as they tore themselves away from their human shapes and into the realm of nightmares. And something else…
Something black, and the spiritual equivalent of being covered in ships’ tar, followed the two beast-men through the chaos. Whatever it was, it was linked to the vile magic that had caused this. It may have even been the agent of that very tortured twisting of men into monsters. It fairly danced and capered through the blood and terror that wove itself into the tapestry of this night.
Now that Ashe found its trail, he could almost see the twisted, scarecrow shape that had danced in the red showers, and rolled in the viscera. And… more.
MORE!
There were now, as Ashe counted such paths, the traces of three beasts. And now four. And now six. Whatever had torn humanity from those first two poor souls had done it several more times this evening. They had willfully perverted these men into monsters. And those monsters had then torn the humanity from other men as easily as they had torn the lives from the rest.
Ashe could see the torchlight eating away at the magic that had trailed along with the men as they had been mutilated in both body and soul, so as to make them mutilate others in turn. Around the great open space of the building his mind wandered, and searched for more clues as to what had happened here, but knowing he had found as much as he could. And the light of the torches ate away at what he had found, even as he circled around the large open space once more. It was all fading.
In the very back of his mind Ashe wondered what his reaction to all of this would be once he returned to his body. Once he was seeing with his eyes, smelling with his nose, and hearing the sobbing of the victims' widows with his own ears again. He had long since enured himself to death, humans died all the time, but the pain of those left behind would always tear at his composure. And the visceral, physical leavings of those bodies no longer occupied by souls… practicality aside, he loathed the mess.
He had been standing outside of a building filled with rotting bodies that had been opened and thrown about with abandon for at least a turning of the hour at this point, he knew the smell would linger with him for hours. He was not looking forward to returning to his corporeal form, even as he forced his mind into the contraction of consciousness that would find him feeling his own toes in his own boots again.
HIs eyes closed, he calmly called out for Master Elbana. And waited, counting the duration of his inhales and exhales as he felt the air rushing in and out of his nose, pushing out his chest over and over.
At the eleventh breath, Ashe could hear the steady footfalls of Master Elbana as she approached.
His eyes flew open as she reached Ashe where he stood, and he could see the grim, simmering anger on her face.
She was good at “Anger.” It focused her like none other he had ever met.
“Master Elbana, I have found some limited evidence of magic having been usd here to cause all of this. I will need to inform His Majesty immediately. Is there anything you need?” He had been able to keep his voice calm, and even, speaking with confidence and surety that he in no way actually felt. But, Elbana didn’t need to see his fear. Her job was daunting enough without Ashe showing her his misgivings about all of these events.
She slowly looked back over her shoulder into the warehouse. Following her line of sight, Ashe watched as a newly minted widow collapsed over the scant remains of the man she had thought to be married to for years to come. When she turned back to him, Elbana asked “Could you send a wagon from the castle? I plan to ask the Temples to help us here. Identifying the as yet unknown bodies, and in helping us to sort out funeral rites.”
He gave her a slight bow, acknowledging her foresight. “I will see to sending a runner to the High Priest, Raoh. He will want to know what I have found, as well.” He looked up at the castle, then back as the line of horses where his own horse stood picketed alongside those of Elbana and her Guardsmen. “Could you see to it that Soot gets back to her stable when you return to the castle?”
As she began to nod in affirmation, Ashe turned from the flickering light of the doorway, and pushed through the shadows that made the alley along the north side of the warehouse as dark as the deepest, most starless night sky.
With an effort of Will, Lord Ashe stepped into an even darker place than that blackened alley, and pushed himself toward the feelings of comfort and safety that marked his own rooms in the castle. It would hurt to push himself so soon after such a deep Delving, but it was the fastest way.